Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is a spectacular work-in-progress

Fighting game followers are truly spoilt for choice in this generation of gaming hardware: over the last few years alone we’ve had new versions of Street Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear, Fatal Fury and Mortal Kombat, with several other options filling the gaps. But there was one sub-genre that remained criminally under-represented all this time: the tag team one – each player using two or more different fighters, switching between them on the fly during rounds – as established by the legendary X-Men vs Street Fighter all the way back in 1996.

It’s easy to see, then, why so many fans of this wonderfully chaotic type of gameplay celebrated the unveiling of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls back in June: not only did it give off strong Marvel vs Capcom vibes, it was also the first true AAA tag team fighter since 2018 (Dragon Ball FighterZ) or even 2017 (Marvel vs Capcom Infinite).

Designed from the ground up for the PS5/PS5 Pro and capable PCs, it looks as next-gen as one would expect of it… but how does it actually play? Yours truly took part in the recent PS5 closed beta to find that out, so here are his early impressions regarding Arc System Works’ ambitious fighter.

Impressively solid for a game in beta, extremely promising netcode

The early version Arc System Works made available to fans offered all of the 8 characters already unveiled – Captain America, Spider-man, Storm, Miss Marvel, Iron Man, Doctor Doom, Ghost Rider and Star Lord – and the select screen seems able to accommodate 24 fighters at the very least, even 32 if profile thumbs are tightly spaced. This means there’s a good chance there’ll be 16 characters available to play at launch – a good number that also leaves a lot of room for DLC.

The closed beta version obviously offered online play – across no less than seven different server territories – as well as a VS CPU mode players could experiment with before visiting the online lobby or using matchmaking. A short tutorial covered control basics – movement, attacks, defense, combos and tag attacks – and there was an impressive amount of other options to tinker with for this early a stage. The user experience as a whole was great: the game loaded in a snap, menu navigation and option selection where instantaneous, the cutely-designed lobby was welcoming and matchmaking was trouble-free every single time.

Talking about online functionality, the Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls netcode is, amazingly enough, flawless already: yours truly resides in Europe, where connection was rock-solid with players of the same territory, but the same was true for North America-based and Asia-based players too, without any perceptible lag to speak of during play. This is highly promising for the final product, no matter when Arc System Works and Sony decide to release it (seemingly still undecided but most definitely not before mid-summer 2026).

Tag team gameplay as fun and frantic as ever… but also far from perfect

So Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls seems to be very well-put together and already quite polished for a title at this stage of development, but how does it actually play? Well, yours truly is happy to report that it definitely scratches that itch many fighting game fans had for a good tag-team title, but… it’s complicated.

First things first: Arc System Works’ title nails all the basics. Players have the full arsenal of this type of game at their disposal, from light, medium and heavy attacks, to standing or crouching blocks, grabs and counters. Gamers can string together combos using normal and special moves alike (the latter make for great finishers) and aerial juggling features heavily, loyal to the tradition of the Marvel vs series.

What yours truly was most eager to try was the way tag-team works in Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls and came away… baffled. This is the first such title that features not just 2v2 or even 3v3, but 4v4 battles, meaning that players start with two characters and add two more in the course of a fight. In theory, this adds variety to each encounter (as players can switch to any one of the other characters at any point) and results in some of the most spectacular attacks ever seen in a game of this type (as players can deliver special Assist offence using all four characters on screen at once).

In practice, though, what often happens – something many streamers had complained about during the first beta of the title in September, which yours truly did not take part in – is that many fights end before players get to use every one of the available four characters extensively. What’s more, the game itself does not really encourage them to use all four fighters and take advantage of their collaborative offensive moves: one can dominate the game using just the first character or maybe the second for some quick assist attacks and… that’s it.

This is a problem because Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is marketed as a tag-team title above all else. So it seems that Arc System Works has two choices on the matter: it can either leave things as they are and just hope that players – both veterans and newcomers – will see the value in using all four characters eventually or it can try to somehow enforce the use of assists by putting players not utilizing that mechanic at a great disadvantage.

One other thing Arc System Works could do, come to think of it, is draw a clear line between tag-team gameplay and single-character fights. It could, say, include a separate 1v1 mode as a totally different way to play the game, with adjusted power and special bars, different damage delivered etc. That way the company could focus on making Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls work as a tag-team title that actually requires assist attacks to win.

Having said that, switching fighters – or delivering combo attacks with two or more fighters – does seem quite restrictive at present, as it can only be done on neutral or during specific windows within attack and defense movement. It would make no sense to change characters mid-combo, obviously, but the current options should be tweaked to become a bit more flexible. Defense needs a bit of polishing too, especially when it comes to counters and aerials, as there are far too many ways for the attacker to abuse infinite combos right now.

Speaking of combos, there’s an easy way to deliver considerable damage with no trouble at all in this game… so of course it would prove controversial. Yours truly refers to “auto combos”, strings of attacks that can be performed by just mashing buttons quickly, almost randomly, without carefully timed, deliberate input from the player. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls offers this as a way for newcomers to enjoy the game from the get go and occasionally marvel at the spectacular pyrotechnics filling the screen. But it’s rather overpowered in its current state, way too easy to pull off and almost without risk – so technical players are naturally frustrated by this.

Other seasoned players who tried the Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls beta seemed to take issue with various other things, such as the general speed of the game – some found it slow, others confusingly fast during crazy team combos – or the duration of the pre-scripted animations during special attacks (they do seem to last a bit longer than needed once one has seen them dozens of times), as well as the overall feel of the characters right now (many think that there’s not enough differentiation between movesets of totally different fighters).

Yours truly can see where some of these complaints come from, but this seems like a game mainly addressed to casual gamers… so a couple of choices there are rather deliberate. That’s OK, but Arc System Works does need to find ways to make the game fun for experienced players too, such as implementing options that allow them to counter and punish auto combos or get more creative with their own combos regardless of movesets.

Top-notch presentation, audiovisuals to die for

Regardless of the gameplay mechanics (which yours truly expects to be tuned further before release anyway) Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls feels, looks and sounds like the true AAA blockbuster production one would associate with the famous comics brand and Sony Interactive Entertainment. What’s more, Arc System Works has managed to infuse its latest fighting game with a distinct, decidedly Japanese-themed visual style that plays extremely well with the traditional design of Marvel super heroes.

Iron Man, for instance, dons an armor that looks unmistakably Mecha-like, Spider-man’s extravagant jumps and swerves never go unnoticed, Star Lord is as playfully energetic as always while Captain America and Doctor Doom exude power and authority through almost imperceptible details in simple movement. Every character stays true to his comic book origins but, as a whole, they somehow avoid sticking to the same old designs lots of people are kind of tired after two decades of Marvel movies. This is a smart choice, beautifully executed.

The quality of the animation impresses in every turn but, truth be told, it’s the graphics themselves that steal the show, so to speak. Arc System Works has done an even more admirable work in making true 3D, fully polygonal graphics look practically 2D and hand-drawn than in DragonBall FighterZ. All characters, as well as the stages and the vast majority of effects, look directly lifted from comic book pages: sharp black lines, lively colors, convincing shading, astounding detail, they all work together to bring this game to life on screen. Spectators will enjoy spotting this or that detail in every clash, every super move transition, every victory posing.

This being a beta, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls was not absolutely perfect in terms of visuals. Due to the camera angles and varied depth used in the game – e.g. during special moves or winning poses – a number of textures can look low-res and soft (while looking fine in normal gameplay). The characters sometimes do not blend with the stage environments seamlessly too (they can look “pasted onto” backgrounds and the soft shadows at their feet don’t match the whole “comic book” vibe). It sounds like nitpicking, but small issues become more noticeable over time – hopefully Arc System Works has plenty of time to address these (if it feels it needs to).

The in-battle user interface is informative and easily understandable by fighting game fans, although newcomers will need some time to make sense of all the meters related to gameplay mechanics. Maybe it would be worth exploring whether some UI elements, like energy or special bars, could be smaller in size so they take up less screen space and allow the action more room (but that’s just a personal preference). Sound is well taken care of, with an enjoyably enthusiastic announcer, great character voice overs, meaty effects and a fittingly rock soundtrack. This is a AAA-level production through and through – and it shows.

This can be something great – but Arc System Works has some decisions to make

Despite the number of gameplay elements evidently in need of more work, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is already a highly enjoyable game – especially when one manages to “get in the zone” with its tag mechanic, utilizing all four fighters the way Arc System Works intended. But it’s quite clear that the company must put some serious thought into who is making this game for and how it can serve that target group long-term.

If Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls is to target mainstream consumers that may or may not have played a fighting game in their lives, then it must give them more incentives to play it like a tag-team title. There are several high-quality 1v1 fighting games out there already and – even taking the appeal of Marvel’s characters as source material into account – the market is probably not in need of another one basically playing just like those. Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls will have to stand out based on its much-discussed 4v4 approach, which is not exactly its strongest feature right now, while remaining accessible and fun to play or watch.

In addition to that, if Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls intends to gain the support of the somewhat small but fiercely dedicated fighting game community too, it will have to make a number of gameplay changes. It would have to address the majority of issues highlighted by many hardcore players – be it auto combo duration and damage, assist timings, movement speed or movelist diversity to name but a few – and, as a result, the game would feel and play differently. It would most probably become deeper and more versatile, but also more technical (just as hardcore fighting game fans like it) and less forgiving (which newcomers won’t like).

At the end of the day, Sony financed this game in order to strengthen its presence in the e-sports market segment, so Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls needs high tournament participation and famous players playing it in order to achieve that. This balance between accessibility and depth is, admittedly, very hard to strike: it’s one that many fighting games – which inherently come with a steep learning curve – failed to find in the past.

Having said that, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls seems perfectly capable of nailing this balance if carefully, smartly tuned – and Arc System Works is experienced enough to pull this off – so yours truly has high hopes for it. 2026 can’t come soon enough!